4. ENLACE COVALENTE
4.3. Distintos tipos de sustancias covalentes
This concluding chapter summarises a number of high level methodological and substantive points synthesising points that arise across the preceding chapters. It should be considered in conjunction with themes raised in the Appendix (Researcher Consultation).
Methodological cross-themes
Most substantive research on violence in Scotland tends to fall into one of the following three categories: quantitative analyses of violence patterns and trends that draws on official statistics and survey data; mixed-methods studies of specific contexts of violence, for example pubs and clubs or particular communities; and small scale qualitative research amongst specific groups of perpetrators and/or victims. In reviewing the research and speaking with leading researchers, a number of methodological insights have emerged.
1. Larger scale, life course research offers an important resource for understanding specific issues like violence. An important exception to the ‘standard’ approaches to violence research is the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, which is an extremely valuable source of data for understanding violence in Scotland. There is now a substantial literature on risk factors for violent offending and victimisation, but it is still unclear which are merely ‘markers’ and which may be causally related. Longitudinal studies such as the ESYTC can help establish the sequencing of variables and help tease out cause from effect. It also offers a form of study that contextualises violence within larger patterns of lives to avoid one limitation of the standard approaches which is to over determine or over prioritise violence as a problem in individual lives or communities.
2. Advances in quantitative methods can help reveal complexities that may be hidden within aggregate violence trends. We gave examples of this in the use of latent class analysis and moving averages. Ongoing quantitative analysis of recorded crime and survey data has yielded important insights into some of the patterns of offending and victimisation that underpin headline trends. These relate to the spatial patterning of violence and the link between violence and social deprivation. Quantitative analysis suggests distinct patterns of violent victimisation, and is starting to be able to more effectively address the distinctive features of repeat and routine forms of violence, such as domestic abuse and hate crime.
3. This report also highlights the value of using more sophisticated methods and a need for more mixed method and multi-scalar work to analyse and disaggregate available crime data. For example, while the SCJS is an important source of data on violence and victimisation, and now includes a better set of comparable measures than previously available, it lacks some of the wider indicators required to enable assessment of multi-dimensional inequality. The SCJS is also limited to households and adults and it does not capture crimes against other victims, including young people and those living outside ‘normal’ households – e.g. homeless people, people living in institutions.
www.sccjr.ac.uk 61 4. Both public health and feminist approaches offer promise as tools to improve
understanding and prevention of violence, but also carry risks when poorly implemented. These perspectives emphasise that violence perpetration,
victimisation and prevention are shaped by the interplay of individual, interpersonal, community and socio-structural factors. If we are to achieve a holistic understanding of violence in Scotland we need a research strategy capable of examining these intersecting contexts – moving beyond the prioritisation of individual-level factors to examine how, for example, shifting labour market conditions work through community and normative structures, shaping gender roles and relationship dynamics, alongside individual attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and stressors. 5. The way in which violence is (or isn’t) defined has a major impact on the final
results. Different studies adopt different criteria, for example sometimes relying on respondents’ own definitions or, alternatively, specifying a series of behaviourally specific acts of physical, sexual or emotional abuse (e.g. hitting, slapping or kicking) and setting parameters as to the time period, frequency etc. This means that prevalence figures on violence are not comparable.
6. The challenge of capturing routine and repeat victimisation. Research indicates that the people most chronically affected by violence often deny or minimise their
experiences due to a combination of shame, fear of reprisals, feelings of self-blame, or because routine forms of violence are often normalised. This poses a particular challenge for quantitative approaches, which tend to underreport violent
victimisation and especially routine and repeat victimisation. In general, prevalence estimates are higher for more focused, localised studies than national surveys designed primarily for other purposes.
7. Evaluation methodologies are of limited value in assessing violence prevention and intervention strategies. The complex and multi-faceted nature of violence makes it difficult to establish an evidence-base in terms of effective interventions. Not only are controlled evaluation designs and randomised trials near impossible in the context of violent street cultures, for example, in the few instances where such designs are implemented it is often difficult to attribute any ‘promising’ results solely to the intervention under evaluation.
8. There is a need to consider the ethical challenges and implications of research itself, particularly in studies of violence. Challenges that are particular to violence research relate to potentially threatening and traumatic nature of the subject matter and the perceived ‘vulnerability’ of the research participants. Many of groups with disproportionately higher experiences of violence also are considered to be ‘over researched’ creating the risk of research becoming part of a dynamic of institutional violence.
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Marginalisation and intersectionality cross-themes
1. Qualitative research has highlighted the significance of poverty, gender and
childhood victimisation in shaping involvement in violent offending – alongside use of alcohol and weapon availability. A key focus for research on violence in Scotland in recent years has been youth violence and knife carrying, with a number of
qualitative studies engaging with young men (and, to a lesser extent, young women) from deprived communities and/or in custodial settings. Across subjects, research is needed to fill gaps in mapping the relationships of deprivation, young people’s experiences, victimisation and offending.
2. An overarching theme of research reported here is that serious violence is a
relatively rare occurrence, but particular communities and social groups experience regular, low-level violence and/or fear of violence which has a significant impact on their social participation and sense of wellbeing.
3. Scotland has long-established research strengths in the field of gender-based
violence, particularly around criminal justice responses to domestic abuse and sexual violence. Feminist research in this area highlights the limits of conventional
criminal justice approaches to defining and responding to GBV, as well as pointing to the enduring influence of gender norms which minimise or support violence. Feminist research also has the potential to shape wider understanding of crime and victimisation beyond GBV.
4. Hate crime was identified as a key priority for future research. Especially lacking is research looking at the experiences of (and responses to) people with learning disabilities and other multiply marginalised groups. Given that identities intersect and experiences of violence often overlap, such research must attend to the
(institutional, community) contexts which put people at risk, rather than focusing on one form of harm. The literature on hate crime also points to the need for
population-based data. Whilst small-scale qualitative studies are essential for
understanding the meanings and dynamics of violence, they do not tell us how many people overall are affected, nor how violence affects different groups.
5. The intersections between gender and race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age and disability also remain under-researched in relation to domestic abuse and sexual violence.
6. We know more about victims of hate crime and domestic abuse than we do about perpetrators.
7. The significance of the community context of violence is highlighted by a number of the research studies presented here, with a range of evidence identifying a link between area deprivation and violence perpetration and victimisation. Yet very little research on either perpetrators or victims has examined this community context in any depth. This will require a combination of quantitative and qualitative
www.sccjr.ac.uk 63 ethnographic and/or participatory methods. There is also an argument for such research to attend to low crime neighbourhoods and/or include the experiences of ‘ordinary’ and/or ‘resilient’ community members.
Under-researched areas
1. Up-to-date research is needed on the relationship between shifting patterns of alcohol consumption and violent offending, including the impact of recent changes to alcohol licencing.
2. Surprisingly little research has been conducted into the relationship between drugs, violence and organised crime.
3. We need more studies that look at institutional and workplace violence, and locate it within violence research generally. The discussion of workplace and institutional violence shows strong overlaps and associations with other forms of violence including gender-based violence.
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Appendix: Summary of themes from researcher consultation
This project involved interviews with over three dozen leading researchers whose work in some way touches on problems of violence (see Acknowledgements). These researchers were diverse and work in fields ranging across criminology, sociology, disability studies, gender research, medical research, urban studies, and more. We asked them to reflect on the latest developments in their areas and to comment on the most important conceptual, methodological and substantive contributions of their field over the past ten years.
The following themes identified by researchers offer a useful sense of the main changes over the past decade that are informing how violence is understood and studied. What is violence? Most discussed competing definitions of violence (e.g. public health, criminal legal, etc.), with an emphasis on the limits of especially criminal legal approaches (both theories and methods) which understand (or ‘count’) violence as a ‘one-off’ physical incident targeting an individual.
The contribution of feminist perspectives on gender-based violence: Scotland is regarded as a world leader in terms of GBV research (and policy/practice). A number of researchers commented on the positive contribution of feminist-informed research in: expanding the definition of violence to incorporate broader forms of harm; demonstrating that violence generally occurs in a repeated and patterned ways; and emphasising that these patterns are often linked to entrenched social relations. The relationship between masculinity,
marginalisation and violence is explored in a range of Scottish studies.
Pervasive victimisation: Most of the researchers we spoke to emphasised the ‘pervasive’, ‘embedded’, ‘engrained’ character of much interpersonal violence. Indeed, many of the (predominantly qualitative) researchers who raised this point did not initially set out to study violence, but rather said that violence emerged as a prominent feature of the lives of their (often marginalised) participants. Sometimes this violence was identified as such by participants, other times it was ‘normalised’ and/or ‘taken-for-granted’. This common experience of violence was seen to pose methodological challenges, particularly in terms of reporting ‘incidences’ of violence, linking back to the initial point about definitional issues (and potential limitations of quantitative measures). Examples related to violence
experienced by disabled people, ethnic and religious minorities, contexts of domestic/intimate partnerships, and families more generally.
Overlapping circumstances and populations of victimisation and offending: Researchers consistently highlighted the frequent overlap between victims and offenders. Depending on disciplinary background and training, some discussed this in relation to ‘adverse childhood experiences’; others placed greater emphasis on mediating structural and/or institutional contexts. This led to discussions around the significance of trauma for people in the criminal justice system – and its links with interpersonal, institutional, structural and symbolic forms of violence.
www.sccjr.ac.uk 65 Violence and inequality: Researchers reflected that violence often emerges within a context of multiple disadvantage, recognising the ways in which intersecting social divisions
structure the impact and experience of violence. This requires a research approach that goes beyond decontextualized measurement of incidents. This is necessary in order to situate violence in a deeper, more multi-dimensional picture capable of articulating the different meanings of violence for diverse groups and in particular contexts. The emphasis on disadvantage is important here because it acknowledges the social context of these experiences (and its association with other harms of inequality related to health, education, housing), and the need to avoid the individualizing (and potentially pathologising)
consequences of the concept of ‘needs’ (and ‘risks/needs’).
Epistemic, symbolic and structural violence: A history of institutional denial, especially around sexual abuse and hate crime, was mentioned by a number of researchers – although recent shifts were noted (e.g. in relation to HEI context). Related to this, researchers noted that some populations exert epistemic privilege pertaining to violence. (Epistemic privilege refers to the ability of those having superior relative standing and power based on factors such as gender, social class, educational attainment, race/ethnicity, dominant religion, including the subtle markers of these, to impose their own worldview and life experience as normal/superior. This shapes ideas about who can be a victim, how a problem is defined and so on. Epistemic privilege means the views and experiences of marginalised groups have been generally neglected and/or dismissed. Examples of such groups particularly highlighted related to disabled people and those with a history of institutional care, drug and alcohol misuse, mental health problems, homelessness, chronic poverty, and
victimisation.
Workplace violence and violence within institutions: Although a number of researchers highlighted the significance of state violence (e.g. in relation to the treatment of people with learning difficulties in prison, or the removal of children from disabled mothers), workplace violence was a topic that failed to come up in conversation and when asked researchers had very little knowledge of this issue or of relevant Scottish data or research.
(Over)emphasis on youth ‘territorial’ violence: Alongside gender-based violence, there would appear to be a wealth of research literature pertaining to young people, territorial gangs and violence in Scotland. This was generally highlighted as strength, in terms of sufficient evidence existing in this area. However, a number of researchers felt there was a need to focus on violence throughout the life course – and on violence that takes place outwith the public sphere. There also was some challenge around the language of ‘youth gangs’ and its slippage with lay and tabloid use of this term.
The Scottish crime drop and deprivation: Researchers noted that violence has decreased overall, but in uneven ways so that it appears to be becoming more concentrated (which is not the same as saying it is increasing) in specific (particularly deprived) communities. This links to the point made above about the mutually reinforcing nature of violence and related forms of disadvantage – and the need to understand this co-occurrence as a stand-alone factor (i.e. the effects of each disadvantage cannot just be added together). The question of whether violence is moving from the public to the private sphere was raised by a number of researchers.
www.sccjr.ac.uk 66 Alcohol, drugs and violence: Alcohol and drugs came up surprisingly infrequently in our discussions with criminological researchers, and so we actively sought contributions from the substance misuse community. The research here is less likely to centre crime/violence and its prevention and more likely to focus on issues of health outcomes and recovery. Organised crime groups and violence: There is a perceived relationship between OCGs, drugs and violence but very limited research evidence. There is also some debate about how to define what constitutes an OCG, and this complicates the ability to explore the
relationship to violence.
The relationship between criminal justice and public health: A number of researchers emphasised the importance of adopting a public health approach to addressing violence, although there remains a lack of specificity and consensus on what this means; some critical views were expressed about the ACEs and other risk-orientated paradigms.
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